He Thinks He Knows Her
by ElanorRose
Summary: Dark little Shannon character fic, as she mses over her secrets she's kept, and how much Boone likes to pretend he knows.


He thinks he knows her. Of course he does. He's priggish, and stubborn, and smug, and thinks he knows everyone. Especially her. But he doesn't. She can't stress that enough.

He doesn't know, for example, that when she was supposedly romancing her latest boyfriend, shopping on LA's finest clothing boulevards, or maybe even reading the latest issue of Elle magazine, that she was really crouching in her walk-in closet. She'd climb up the window lattice when the family was busy, and sit in the darkness with a bottle of prescription acne pills in her hand, and contemplate an easy way out.

She remembers the feel of the little pink ovals, piled in a perfectly buffed and lotioned palm. How ironic it is that her obsession with beauty would fuel her deepest secret. And funnier still that she couldn't let go. And, oh, she tried. She would bring her hand to her mouth, so close that she could feel the warmth of her breath on her face, and that would scare her, only because she couldn't believe that inside she was really so warm.

Sometimes, the gel cases surrounding the pill would start to dissolve from moisture in her breath, and they'd stick to her palm, or even her lips, if the day had been bad enough. Once, she actually put them in her mouth, the day her father told her she shouldn't have dreams, because they would never go anywhere. The pills sat on her tongue for so long, as she wondered whether to swallow, that they grew strange in taste, so she spit them out into a waiting hand, and threw them all away. She scrubbed her hands for a half hour that night, desperate to forget the feeling of slimy little pink things melting there. In the morning, she told her mother she needed a refill because they'd fallen on the floor.

She loved the game they played, the game called Let's Be Perfect. It was too easy for Shannon to fall into the fake rhythm of smile coyly, giggle, cross her ankles. Too easy, because then it became automatic. She'd see the faces of her family, and the mask would fall into place, and they never knew that she sat at home for an hour and a half each afternoon in her walk-in closet, romancing death.

Her brother, though, he was different. When she was little, she used to call him Boonie the cowboy. He must've thought it endearing, because then he'd ruffle her hair and go play video games. She didn't even think of him as a step-brother, not then, anyway. He was the only one in the family who looked at her with a genuine smile. Now, though, he'd been turning strange, too. He told his jock friends that they'd always been close, even though he probably couldn't even tell her what her current favorite color was, and he hadn't remembered her birthday in two years. He'd taken their loving childhood friendship and used it was a tool. Being the brother of the most popular girl was a plus, of course.

She didn't even know why she hung on anymore. Maybe it was to a precious memory of how he used to tell her that her eyes were so pretty they could melt the Arctic, she couldn't tell you. He broke a window, once, in her bedroom. Her father had been yelling at her over the latest report card, and she said, why even bother, I'm not going anywhere anyway. And Boone had stormed in, and had punched it out. All over the pink carpet. She tried to help him clean it up, but all she could manage to think about was how pretty one of those long glass pieces would look stuck in her arm. So she acted the princess, and left for a party without looking back.

Every time she sat in the closet, she would see Boone's face, and her mind would stop. She hated how he looked at her, but he was the only thing she had left. And in her mind's eye, she would picture his smile, his true and nice smile, not the fake one, and it would prevail over her whirling thoughts, among shoes and purses and Prada gowns. She began to even associate him with the smells of leather and dry-cleaning. Which is why she was so startled when he opened the door one day, and nearly blinded her with light. "Shannon," he said to her, "do you really want to do this?"

And she thought, for a long, long time.

And he waited.

And, finally, she replied, "No…"

And got up.

And walked away from that place, still holding on.

* * *

...

I love Shan. To death. 'Nuff said.

Ta.

Shae


End file.
